A COLLECTOR of old vehicles who was told in December to remove the cars, vans and non-agricultural vehicles scattered around his farm in the Doward, has failed to comply with an enforcement order.

The enforcement notice gave Mark Dew until February 18 to permanently remove all the old vehicles from the land.

This is not the first time such an attempt has been made by Herefordshire Council to force Mr Dew to remove the vehicles as the council served a similar enforcement notice on him in 2019 giving him six months to comply. But no further action was taken.

This time the Council’s enforcement team is aware of the current situation and a spokesperson for the authority said: “We are reviewing our position before deciding on the next course of action.”

Last June an auction at Doward Farm was said to be Britain’s biggest-ever barn-find car collection with some 200 vehicles going under the hammer.

However, some of the scrap cars that didn’t sell at the auction held last June have since been moved after the enforcement notice was issued, but there are a lot that remain on site.

Mr Dew started his car collecting hobby 40 years ago with the original intention on setting up a motor museum and over the following four decades he managed to fill up a barn and several fields with an assortment of vehicles. But when a number of these vehicles didn’t sell at the auction they remained in situ on the land.

Six months later Mr Dew was sent an enforcement notice stating ‘The siting and storage of old/scrap cars, vans and non-agricultural vehicles at the farm, constituted “a material change of use”, from farmland to mixed use, without planning permission’.

Mr Dew was warned that a retrospective bid for planning permission would not receive officer support, given the sensitive location of the farm in the Wye Valley National Landscape.